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At least 937 records · Page 52Linked to original sources
PubMed1998

Non-fatal workplace violence workers' compensation claims (1993-1996).

More is known about fatal workplace violence than non-fatal workplace violence (NFWV). This study provides descriptive information on the number and cost of NFWV claims filed with a large workers' compensation carrier. NFWV claims from 51 US jurisdictions were selected either by cause codes or by word search from the accident-description narrative. Claims reported in 1993 through 1996 were analyzed to report the frequency, cost, gender, age, industry, and nature of injury. An analysis of a random sample of 600 claims provided information on perpetrator type, cause of events, and injury mechanism. A total of 28,692 NFWV claims were filed during the study period. No cost was incurred for 32.5% of the claims, and 15.5% received payments for lost work. As a percentage of all claims filed by industry, schools had the highest percentage (11.4%) of NFWV claims, and banking had the highest percentage (11.5%) of cost. The majority of claims in the banking random sample group (93%) were due to stress. In the random sample, 90.3% of claims were caused by criminals (51.8%) or by patients, clients, or customers (38.5%). Only 9.7% were caused by an employee (9.2%) or a personal acquaintance of the employee (0.5%). Employers should acknowledge that NFWV incidents occur, recognize that the majority of perpetrators are criminals or clients rather than employees, and develop appropriate prevention and intervention programs.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

The cost of on-site versus off-site workplace urinalysis testing for illicit drug use.

Workplace drug testing has become standard business practice in America. With increasing costs, however, many corporations look for more cost-effective testing alternatives. The study compared the cost of two testing strategies: urinalysis at the work site versus testing that occurs elsewhere. Employees from seven company locations were tested for illicit drugs. Four sites conducted the initial screening test at the workplace and three sites performed testing off site. On-site testing was found to have significantly lower variable costs, and total costs were lower once a threshold of 27 employees tested was attained. On-site testing also provided immediate access to negative test results, thereby facilitating personnel decisions.

Contract Services↗
PubMed2003

Early workplace intervention for employees with musculoskeletal-related absenteeism: a prospective controlled intervention study.

Sickness absenteeism caused by musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) is a persistent and costly occupational health challenge. In a prospective controlled trial, we compared the effects on sickness absenteeism of a more proactive role for insurance case managers as well as workplace ergonomic interventions with that of traditional case management. Patients with physician-diagnosed MSDs were randomized either to the intervention group or the reference group offered the traditional case management routines. Participants filled out a comprehensive questionnaire at the initiation of the study and after 6 months. In addition, administrative data were collected at 0.6, and 12 months after the initiation of the project. For the entire 12-month period, the total mean number of sick days for the intervention group was 144.9 (SEM 11.8) days/person as compared to 197.9 (14.0) days in the reference group (P < 0.01). Compared with the reference group, employees in the intervention group significantly more often received a complete rehabilitation investigation (84% versus 27%). The time for doing this was reduced by half (59.4 (5.2) days versus 126.8 (19.2), P < .01). The odds ratio for returning to work in the intervention group was 2.5 (95% confidence interval 1.2-5.1) as compared with the reference group. The direct cost savings were USD 1195 per case, yielding a direct benefit-to-cost ratio of 6.8. It is suggested that the management of MSDs should to a greater degree focus on early return to work and building on functional capacity and employee ability. Allowing the case managers a more active role as well as involving an ergonomist in workplace adaptation meetings might also be beneficial.

Absenteeism↗
PubMed2003

Effective intervention with ergonomics, antivibration gloves, and medical surveillance to minimize hand-arm vibration hazards in the workplace.

Medical surveillance was used in the workplace to determine and monitor the level of hand-arm vibration syndrome (HAVS) and carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) present in workers exposed to upper extremity vibration. Ergonomic intervention in the form of new tools with lower vibration levels and the use of International Standards Organizaiton (ISO) 10819 antivibration gloves were associated with a decrease in the pathologic findings and symptoms in these workers. Workers without such intervention were more likely to show progression of symptoms and findings. These findings suggest that ergonomic intervention can be effective in controlling the workplace hazard of tool vibration.

Arm Injuries↗
PubMed2005

Ethical issues in the use of genetic information in the workplace: a review of recent developments.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: In the wake of the Human Genome Project, the pace of genetic discovery has quickened. New genetic tests and other molecular technology have had immediate and wide relevance to American and European workers. These tests have the potential to provide improved workplace safety and protect workers' health, but they also carry the risk of genetic discrimination including loss of employment, promotion, insurance and health care. Ethical safeguards are necessary if the benefits are to outweigh the adverse consequences of genetics in the workplace. RECENT FINDINGS: This review examines the major policy statements issued in Europe and the USA from 2000 to 2005 pertaining to genetic issues in occupational health. Recent findings stress that genetic testing can only be utilized with worker consent and that the workers should control access to genetic information. Such testing is only justified when the information is required to protect the safety of the worker or a third party. The progress of occupational genetic technology should not be permitted to shift the responsibility for a safe working environment from the employer to the employee. Genetic discrimination in all forms is neither supported scientifically nor warranted ethically. SUMMARY: Increasingly, occupational physicians and clinicians treating workers will be faced with potentially stigmatizing genetic information and there is an urgent need for education and research to expand and implement the recommendations of major governmental and professional policy statements.

Editorial↗
PubMed1999

Workplace health concerns: a focus group study.

Addresses the workplace health concerns of employees at an Acute Hospital Trust. The research conducted utilised a focus group methodology to investigate the health concerns of multidisciplinary groups of health care workers (n = 27). The findings indicate that the concern for the majority was workplace stress. Stressors that were identified as important to the groups were for example, the nature of the work they were undertaking, staffing levels, volume of the work, management styles and their work environments. Health promotion and prevention topics such as motivation and health status, smoking, alcohol and drug misuse, nutrition and weight control and physical exercise were seen of subsidiary concern. Limitations of the study are given. Future research in the subject area is identified.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed2001

Constitutional values and HIV/AIDS in the workplace: reflections on Hoffman v. South African Airways.

South Africa is experiencing an HIV/AIDS epidemic of enormous proportions. The workplace, like all the other sectors, is adversely affected. The tendency of a significant proportion of employers has been to discriminate against employees and job applicants living with HIV/AIDS through the use of HIV testing to exclude those that are HIV-positive. In the case of Hoffman v South African Airways, the Constitutional Court was asked to determine the constitutionality of excluding a job applicant on account of an HIV-positive status. The Court ruled in favour of the applicant and ordered instatement. Through an analysis of Hoffman v South African Airways, the article examines how constitutional values are impacting on HIV/AIDS-related ethics in the workplace.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗
PubMed2004

Ethics and choosing appropriate means to an end: problems with coal mine and nuclear workplace safety.

A common problem in ethics is that people often desire an end but fail to take the means necessary to achieve it. Employers and employees may desire the safety end mandated by performance standards for pollution control, but they may fail to employ the means, specification standards, necessary to achieve this end. This article argues that current (de jure) performance standards, for lowering employee exposures to ionizing radiation, fail to promote de facto worker welfare, in part because employers and employees do not follow the necessary means (practices known as specification standards) to achieve the end (performance standards) of workplace safety. To support this conclusion, the article argues that (1) safety requires attention to specification, as well as performance, standards; (2) coal-mine specification standards may fail to promote performance standards; (3) nuclear workplace standards may do the same; (4) choosing appropriate means to the end of safety requires attention to the ways uncertainties and variations in exposure may mask violations of standards; and (5) correcting regulatory inattention to differences between de jure and de facto is necessary for achievement of ethical goals for safety.

Air Pollutants, Radioactive↗
PubMed1992

Obstacles to effective alcohol policy in the workplace: a case study.

Based on a case study of an assembly plant in a large US corporation, this paper reports on cultural and environmental influences on the form and process of workplace alcohol policy. Utilizing both ethnographic and survey methods, research findings indicate that although alcohol policies are in place, management and union leaders are unclear about their source and content, and the general employee population perceives alcohol availability and on-job drinking as poorly controlled. In grounded theory fashion, two conceptual themes are employed for organizing empirical explanations of the weakened policy and under-controlled drinking. These are: (1) the dual alcohol policy dilemma, and (2) the union-management debate over authority to discipline. The ambivalent nature of alcohol policy and organizational mechanisms involved in its implementation become risk factors for developing workplace-related alcohol problems.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Diabetes mellitus and employment: is there discrimination in the workplace?

The employment record of 102 diabetic workers (73 men, 29 women), identified in a cross-sectional survey of 5670 middle-aged people in a New Zealand workforce, was studied for evidence of discrimination in the workplace. Compared with 403 matched controls (292 men, 111 women), diabetic workers showed no significant differences in socioeconomic status, educational attainment, or distribution between occupational groups. Similarly, mean duration of current employment (12.3 vs 12.4 years), mean number of jobs in the past 5 years (1.25 vs 1.34 jobs), frequency of sickness absence, and mean number of hours worked each week (43.5 vs 43.3h) did not differ significantly between diabetic and non-diabetic groups. We found no significant differences in work stress, even among those diabetic individuals with poor blood glucose control. There was no convincing evidence across a broad spectrum of industry that diabetic workers did suffer discrimination in the workplace.

Absenteeism↗
PubMed1992

Minimization of workplace alcohol problems: the supervisor's role.

Based on findings from an ethnographic analysis of an assembly plant in a large manufacturing industry, this paper delineates a conceptual framework for "minimization" that proposes to explain the interactional processes leading to systemized weakening of alcohol problem awareness and action in the unionized workplace. In the course of 50 semi-structured interviews and observations with union representatives and management, the role of the first-line supervisor emerged as pivotal to minimization. Individual case studies from the ethnography and responses from a survey sample of 1000 employees are used to illustrate how goals and processes of the workplace culture impede forthright action and clear lines of decision making on alcohol issues.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Air nicotine and saliva cotinine as indicators of workplace passive smoking exposure and risk.

We model nicotine from environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) in office air and salivary cotinine in nonsmoking U.S. workers. We estimate that: an average salivary cotinine level of 0.4 ng/ml corresponds to an increased lifetime mortality risk of 1/1000 for lung cancer, and 1/100 for heart disease; > 95% of ETS-exposed office workers exceed OSHA's significant risk level for heart disease mortality, and 60% exceed significant risk for lung cancer mortality; 4000 heart disease deaths and 400 lung cancer deaths occur annually among office workers from passive smoking in the workplace, at the current 28% prevalence of unrestricted smoking in the office workplace.

Air Pollutants, Occupational↗
PubMed1991

Changes in smoking behaviour after a total workplace smoking ban.

This paper reports data on changes in smoking behaviour after the introduction of a total workplace smoking ban in Telecom Australia. A sample of 1089 Telecom staff were surveyed in the months before the introduction of the ban and 620 were resurveyed six months after the ban had been implemented. A further sample of 1424 was drawn from the same parts of the organisation 18 months after implementation. Among the smokers in these samples, the bans produced a reduction in workday cigarette consumption of between three and four cigarettes a day and this reduction was maintained at 18 months. Over the two-year period from six months before the ban to 18 months after it, smoking prevalence dropped about 5 per cent, which we estimate is about twice the decline found in the general community. Workplace smoking bans can produce public health and can assist individual smokers to regulate their habit.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

A preventive dental care programme at the workplace.

Employees from an industrial group in Brisbane were examined at the workplace and found to have generally low levels of dental disease. At the same time, the Australian Bureau of Statistics suggests that less than 45 per cent of Australians attend a dentist annually. This low attendance for regular dental care reduces the effectiveness of any preventive dental service. A pilot scheme of preventive dental care was provided for employees at the workplace in Brisbane. The aim of the programme was to provide regular health counselling and reinforcement of oral health activities, general dental information, regular prophylaxis, scaling and cleaning, and referrals for restorative care. The preventive programme was appropriate given the disease levels. The services were effective in improving the periodontal status and restorative care which resulted from referrals. As well, the preventive dental care programme proved to be readily acceptable to both employees and management.

Dental Health Services↗
PubMed1999

Workplace as an origin of health inequalities.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effect of the workplace on the socioeconomic gradient of sickness absence. DESIGN: Comparison of the relation between socioeconomic status and employee sickness absence in three different towns. SETTINGS: The towns of Raisio, Valkeakoski, and Nokia in Finland. They are equal in size and regional social deprivation indices, located in the neighbourhood of a larger city, and produce the same services to the inhabitants. SUBJECTS: All permanent local government employees from Raisio (n = 887), Valkeakoski (n = 972), and Nokia (n = 934) on the employer's registers during 1991 to 1993. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Rates of short (1-3 days) and long (> 3 days) spells of sickness absence, irrespective of cause, and separately for infection, musculoskeletal disorder, and trauma. RESULTS: In blue collar male and female workers, compared with the same sex higher grade white collar workers, the age adjusted numbers of long sick leaves were 4.9 (95% CI 4.2, 5.8) and 2.8 (2.6, 3.1) times higher, respectively. The risk varied significantly between the towns, in men in relation to long sick leaves irrespective of cause and resulting from musculoskeletal disorders, and in women in relation to long leaves resulting from infection. The numbers of long sick leaves were 3.9 (95% CI 2.8, 5.4) times higher in blue collar male workers than in higher grade white collar male workers in Raisio, 4.9 (95% CI 3.8, 6.3) times higher in Valkeakoski, and 5.8 (95% CI 4.5, 7.5) times higher in Nokia. Sickness absence of blue collar employees differed most between the towns. The rates of long sick leaves in blue collar men were 1.46 times greater (95% CI 1.25, 1.72) in Valkeakoski and 1.85 times greater (95% CI 1.58, 2.16) in Nokia than in Raisio. In men, no significant differences were found between the towns as regards the numbers of long sick leaves of higher grade white collar male workers. The socioeconomic gradients differed more between the towns in men who had worked for four years or more in the same employment than in men who had worked for shorter periods. No consistent health gradients of socioeconomic status were evident for short sick leaves among either sex. CONCLUSIONS: In men and to a lesser extent in women, the workplace is significantly associated with health inequalities as reflected by medically certified sickness absence and the corresponding socioeconomic gradients of health.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1985

Job load and hazard analysis: a method for the analysis of workplace conditions for occupational health care.

One requirement for successful occupational health care is reliable information on occupational hazards. The aim of this study was to develop a simple, standardised method for workplace investigations for use in occupational health care. The theoretical framework of the method comprises the stress-strain model, the hazard-danger model, and risk behaviour theory. The new method, termed job load and hazard analysis, includes four stages: identification of hazards, their evaluation, conclusions and proposals, and follow up. Different methods are available for hazard identification. The identification starts with a rough analysis of five factors, chemical hazards, physical hazards, physical load, mental stress, and accident risk. Hazards and stress factors are assessed with an ordinal scale. Specialised methods are used if all hazards cannot otherwise be identified. The analytical procedure comprises: detection of hazards through observations and interviews at the workplace and with a questionnaire; assessment of findings as teamwork; and evaluation of the results of these assessments to yield conclusions and proposals made by occupational health care personnel. A data processing system has been developed for data storage and future use. The method has functioned in practice, improving the contents of the occupational health care programme and generating preventive measures. The method offers many new possibilities for controlling occupational hazards and studying relations between working conditions and workers' health.

Accidents, Occupational↗
PubMed1995

Implementation of the precautionary principle in standards for the workplace.

The objectives were to describe and discuss the current and proposed European occupational health policy on two categories of substances that pose serious effects: those potentially carcinogenic or genotoxic and those with toxic effects on reproduction. The precautionary principle was applied to setting standards for the workplace for those two categories of substances, to give an impression of the resulting limit values and the consequences of the implementation of this precautionary principle. A pragmatic approach was chosen as this starts with substantial indications of health risks. For the suspected carcinogenic or genotoxic substances 0.1 mg/m3 as a precautionary occupational exposure limit (precautionary OEL) is proposed. For the substances suspected of causing reproductive toxicity the precautionary OEL was derived in three ways, depending on the availability of data and of a current Dutch workplace standard (MAC, maximum accepted concentration): (a) by calculation based on available inhalatory animal data on the risks of reproductive toxicity; (b) by adding a safety factor of 10 to the current MAC, if no inhalatory animal data on reproductive toxicity are available; (c) by using 0.1 mg/m3 as precautionary OEL for substances suspected of having reproductive toxicity but without inhalatory animal data on reproductive toxicity and without a MAC.

Carcinogens↗